


Ships in the Night

by shadesfalcon



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Dark, F/M, Hurt No Comfort, Ignored Safeword, Insults, Loki's mindfuck of a spell, Mind Control, Rape/Non-con Elements, Rough Sex, Self-Hatred, Sexual Content, shit this is dark i'm so sorry, well very little comfort anyway
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-19
Updated: 2015-07-19
Packaged: 2018-04-10 04:48:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4377770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadesfalcon/pseuds/shadesfalcon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tumblr prompt from a while back for "Natasha and Clint exchange 'I love you's, plus points for smut, plus even more points if I cry because of the story."</p><p>I might have gone overboard on the crying bit, because this got dark fast. Please heed the warnings in the tags.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ships in the Night

 

 

 

It’s their tradition. A strange sort of tradition that manifests itself differently, depending on the nature of the completed mission. Sometimes it’s rough, harsh, and desperate groping that can’t hold deep enough in the painful slide of skin against skin. Sometimes it’s soft and lazy. Sometimes it’s somewhere in-between.

As many variations as there are, they have on their list to explore, and the two of them are several hundred down and counting.

Today starts no differently. Well, the shawarma had been new. Tony was awfully persuasive. But as soon as they could, they’d made their way to one of Natasha’s safe-houses and disappeared inside.

She can sense something off in Clint today, and she takes it as a signal to ride rough. Take charge and push him out of whatever thoughts he’s torturing himself with in his head. She takes his hair in her fingertips, twisting it to pull his face sharply against hers.

They kiss for a moment, and Clint does little more than open his mouth compliantly.

He wants her to run the whole show today? That’s fine with her. She’s worn thin after the battle in New York. Crisis after crisis after crisis, so many of them touching dangerously close to her own personal fears. The echoes of Loki’s threat hide in her head.

 _Not until I make him kill you!_ _Slowly_ , _intimately_ , _in every way he knows you fear_.

She’d grown up knowing it was dangerous to trust anyone with her secrets, and it had been a personal triumph to give them to Clint. She’d never anticipated they’d be thrown into a world where he’d be forced to betray her against his will. Secrets wrung out by means outside of their control.

Outside of everyone’s control.

She needs control, and she feels a thrill of gratitude that he knows this. Knows it so well that he’s doing little else but follow her directions underneath her. She bites his lip hard, and gets no response but a slight huff of air.

She pushes him down to sit on the bed and orders him to strip. He does so effortlessly, languidly. Eyes on the floor.

It’s a little too complacent. He’s taking this submission thing further than he ever has. He’s more rag doll than willing fucktoy. She’s not sure she likes it. But she’s also sure she has the skills to wring a response out of him soon enough.

She strips, too. More slowly than his emotionless shucking of clothes. This is a striptease, with swaying hips and hands than runs themselves up and down her own body.

At least his eyes are tracking her now. Watching her hands as she slides them over her breasts and down her stomach. She lets them play at the curving jut of her hipbone. Rubs her thumbs back and forth across the crest with her fingers splayed down so the tips just brush the front of her folds.

She widens her legs, dipping her fingers back to disappear in the shadow between her thighs. Then back up, all the way to her face where she sticks her fingers in her mouth. She uses her other hand to twist her hair up to tangle on top of her head, and she looks down at him.

“Move back,” she orders, and he obeys, eyes caught between her breasts and the bare lips between her legs. Her stance is still widened enough that he can see more than enough to imagine the rest.

She climbs up onto the bed then, and to turns to settle herself over his lap with her back to his front, and teases her entrance over his tip. Rubs up and down until he hardens enough that she can begin to sink down onto him.

She hadn’t had quite enough time to get wet enough to permit a seamless slide, and she thinks for a moment that she could have taken the time to fuck his face, first. But then she decides she likes the sting of it, after a day like today.

She reaches one hand back behind her and pulls his face forward till it’s buried in her shoulder and neck. She twists her head and tries her open-mouthed kisses against him again.

He’s more responsive now. Pushing back when she runs her tongue along the inside of his lips. His legs quiver beneath her, and he’s breathing hard.

But he’s still not playing back with her. Not like she wants. She’ll ride it out, because she’s not a quitter and, hey, maybe’s he’s getting something out of it. But when this is over, she’ll be sure he knows that “rag doll” isn’t really her thing.

She sighs, and lets go of his face, so she can tend to herself, and he leans his weight back against his arms again. The thought occurs to her suddenly that maybe he’s not in the moment, because he’s somewhere else.

“You know it wasn’t your fault, right? You know that. Those agents? They weren’t your fault.”

He stiffens beneath her, not in a good way, and she rolls her eyes at herself. Ok, so maybe that hadn’t been the wisest thing to say.

She lets the question drop, riding up and down his shaft, working herself along. Her thighs burn pleasantly with the effort of the lift and fall, angling herself against him. Her fingers rub and twist at her clit until she throws her head back involuntarily.

She comes, with a small groan of satisfaction, settling down so her hips are flush against his thighs, cock pushing almost too far. She’s full and satiated.

“I love you,” she sighs. It’s the first time she’s said it, and she’s so surprised by it that she follows the confession with a little huff of surprise. Its passing leaves the room in a strange silence and she throws every curse she knows at herself.

How could she be so stupid to ruin the careful _thing_ this is, with an admission to tainting with compromise. Especially when compromise is _exactly_ what he doesn’t need right now.

When Clint breaks the sudden silence, it’s with a laugh. A laugh with a cold bitterness.

“Of course you do, little spider. You just can’t help yourself.”

He pushes her forward, and she’s face first in the sheets. He thrusts into her, and she tries to shift away. It’s _too much_ against her over-sensitized skin. His response is to take her thighs in each hand and pull her back to meet his punishing rhythm.

She tries to still, tries to give him what he’s taking. He deserves it, in light of her rule-breaking confession. She hurts everywhere. What’s one more kind of pain?

She mind-over-matters herself into stillness.

“Such a desperate thing, aren’t you, little assassin?” he whispers into her ear. The rub of his skin against hers begins to hurt less, but his words make her wince.

“Clint?” she murmurs. A half-question, trying to remind him that shaming and insults are not on their list, and that was dangerously close to both.

The only indication that he heard her is a harder thrust, and she’s pushed forward along the sheets. This will bruise her, outside and in.

“You love this. My dick in any orifice you have. You _beg_ me for it. If not with your lips, then with your eyes. With your body. Little slut!”

“Stop.” She means it to be strong. She is always strong. But bent-double beneath him, his cock inside her and her fears on his lips, she has no leverage point.

“You just can’t help but love anything that doesn’t turn you away. Of course you _love_ me.” The four-letter word is acidic in his mouth. “Of course you do. I can actually stand to _touch_ you. I’m the only warmth you know. The only one who can stomach the oily dirt of you against my skin.”

“Red!” She’s never had to safeword out before. Had laughed when he’d first made her accept the need for it. The idea that he could do anything that would actually hurt her had been utterly absurd.

She had been so wrong.

And he’s not stopping.

“Red!” Again.

Maybe he hadn’t heard her?

“Useless little toy that you are. Barely even good enough to fuck. But you like it, right? Tell me how grateful you are, that I deign to fuck you. That I pretend you’re a good little girl that deserves it.”

It’s getting worse, straying from vague sexual insults to something darker. Something more primal in her.

Maybe he’s forgotten the word? They’d made it years ago, and never brought it up again, because he’d never crossed this line in the sand. This line that she had made very clear when they first fell into bed together.

“Clint, you asshole, that’s me using my safeword. Red! Fucking red, damn it.”

His open palms slap her back hard, right at the kidneys, and she loses her breath in the dangerous pain. She’s already covered in bruises, and their games have never gone like this before.

“How many times would I have to make you scream in pain in order for you to make up for what you’ve done? This _warmth._ ” He runs his hands down her thighs to her knees. “What would I have to do to you to make you earn it?”

“Stop.” Whispered. Not even a semblance of strength.

“Stop? But we’re just getting started. Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about. Do you remember that day in the library? Holed up in those stacks. Waiting to lay the first layer of bait for our target. The lights were out, and you whispered to me.”

Not this. Please not this. She doesn’t even have the words for how important “not this” is to her.

“You asked me, if I wanted to know the worst thing you’d ever done. And you told me. In all its gory details. It was so _selfish_ of you. To burden me with that. It was your memory to carry. Not mine.”

She’s crying. She didn’t even know this body could cry anymore.

“But I know what you didn’t tell me. I could feel it in the way you held your body against mine. The way you almost said it, but didn’t. It wasn’t the deed itself that made that the worst thing you’d ever done. The worst thing was that you’d _liked it_. That you’d _enjoyed it._ ” He licks her behind her ear, and she can’t even shudder away from him. “Are you enjoying this, now?”

He comes, pulsing inside her, moaning contentedly into her neck. When he’s done, he just sits there, still inside her.

“You’re nothing but a black hole that sucks down every intimacy.”

 _Intimacy._ The word hits on a memory. Standing before a glass cage staring down a thing that has yet to decide whether he’s man or monster. Honeyed words on his tongue that suddenly bite deep into old scars.

“Because you’ll never know its taste,” he continues. “You have a tapeworm of need. You suck down every human contact you can get your hands on, but it ends up devoured by that filth inside you, and you’re just as unsatiated as ever.” He laughs against her shivering body. “I know your fears.”

Those words again. Again she’s in front of the glass cage.

His hands run up, over her shoulders, and wrap around her neck, compressing her carotids and her windpipe at the same time.

She glances over her shoulder, back at his eyes. They’re hard and cold, with the faintest hint of “too blue” flashing back at her. His face is too still. There is no expression there at all.

It’s not much, but it’s enough to give her strength back, and she twists sharply, bringing her elbow into his head hard enough that she knows _she’ll_ have a contusion, much more him.

He half-falls half-slides out of her and onto the floor. Lands ungracefully and with a slightly puzzled expression.

“Shit, Nat. What’d I do to deserve that?” Half-pissed cocky voice is now, finally, familiar. Whatever remnants of Loki’s mind-fuck of a spell once again gone. He looks up at her face, sees the tears, and jumps to his feet. “Shit! Nat! What did I _do_?”

She waits to see if it will come back to him, and it does suddenly. She can physically see him remembering the last few minutes. His mouth works a couple of times, but nothing comes out.

She lets go, and screams heavily. Loudly. A widow’s wail.

“You know, right?” He says, when her cry trails off. Desperate to fix something. Anything. “That I love you, too. You know, right?”

She screams again, curled over in the sheets.

**Author's Note:**

> Find my [tumblr](http://polyamoryavengers.tumblr.com/) for shenanigans and Marvel oneshots.


End file.
